one song, two versions

what i haven't really told you here is that i lost faith. that may be strange because when i GOT faith, i was not shy to tell you.

it wasn't so much that i lost faith, but given the way i had been thrown out of my church combined with the increasing stress of maintaining all those cognitive dissonances, i walked away from it.

i feel better now, but i also kind of miss it because parts of it were very appealing.

i wrote a lot of church music, though, and even though i feel a vague embarrassment about it now, some of it is still pretty decent work.

the other thing that happened to me is that at about the time i was getting thrown out of my church, i lost my musical voice. my heart was broken and i had devoted the whole of my art to the church and all of a sudden music went right out of my life.

if you are a composer, you think in music. you hear snips and notes and phrases just as you go along in your day. you think in songs. you have a song for unloading the dishwasher, or because it's cold out.

and then one day music was gone from me.

i didn't sing, didn't play, didn't think in music, didn't hear it in my mind, and didn't even care to listen to it.

but recently two things happened. i acquired a young (to me) friend who is a very skilled musician. and you know how you do with new friends: you share the things you have in common.

and i found myself saying "i used to be a musician." and i wanted to share my work, to show who i used to be. and music was less foreign.

but then i fell in love.

and i am still not ready to talk to you about that, but all of a sudden i wanted to bring out all of my work, the good and the bad and say "this is who i was, who i AM", and i wanted suddenly to play music and listen to it and make mixtapes (even though you don't put them on tape any more) because i used to think in music and i used to express love through music and without music i did not have my whole toolset.

so music and i are not quite at home again, but we are having a renewed acquaintance.

and i was looking through my files and i found this song, in two versions. they are strikingly different, i think.